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On Pope Francis’ Consecration of the World
A Reply to Jeff Mirus

by Christopher A. Ferrara
October 18, 2013

Another year, another consecration of the world to the Immaculate Heart. And still no Consecration of Russia. Our hopes dashed yet again.

How many consecrations of the world have there been in response to Our Lady of Fatima’s call for the consecration of Russia? I’ve lost count, but John Paul II alone performed six consecrations or “entrustments”: in 1981, 1982 1983, 1984, 1991 and 2000. The last was a kind of omnibus ceremony that included not only the world and “all people” but also “the young in search of meaning, the unemployed, and those suffering hunger and disease,” as well as “all troubled families, the elderly with no one to help them, and all who are alone and without hope.” In short, just about everyone and everything on the face of the earth… except Russia. The thing would be a joke if it were not so deadly serious.

We know, of course, that John Paul II wished to consecrate Russia by name, but that, as Bishop Paul Josef Cordes revealed, “at the suggestion of his collaborators he abandoned the idea.” That is, the ever-vigilant Vatican bureaucracy, led by the Secretary of State, has prevented Russia’s consecration for diplomatic and “ecumenical” reasons, thus overruling the Mother of God.

For neo-Catholic spokesmen like Jeff Mirus — always ready, willing and able to defend the ecclesial status quo of novelty, drift, confusion and decay — the perverse evasion of Our Lady’s eminently simple request is no big deal. In his usual haughty style, Mirus pontificates: “the insistence that the popes are guilty of serious fault for not following the instructions of Our Lady at Fatima turns the authority of the Church on its head… Mary, we may be certain, is quite aware that she was not made the vicar of Christ by her Son.”

Here Mirus reaches new depths of inanity. First of all, it is not the “authority of the Church” that has impeded the consecration of Russia, but rather the errant advice of papal “collaborators,” first and foremost the Vatican Secretary of State, who have no authority whatsoever over the faithful but who managed to persuade the Pope to abandon the consecration of Russia.

Secondly, it was precisely the Son — that is, God Almighty — who sent His Mother to deliver the Message of Fatima to the Church and the world, confirming its authenticity with an unprecedented public miracle, announced in advance and witnessed by 70,000 people, including unbelievers who converted on the spot. Therefore, if the Message of Fatima is to be accepted at all, it must be viewed as involving a prescription for Russia’s consecration that comes from God Himself. There is no way around this.

Thus, Mirus implicitly subordinates God to the Pope, which is actually what neo-Catholics do consistently when they defend any and all papal acts or omissions, even when they are manifestly injurious to God’s holy Church. For the neo-Catholic mind, there is no practical difference between the papal will and the divine will: whatever the Pope says, does, or fails to do must be accepted without protest.

Mirus recites the usual “private revelation” canard — as if apparitions containing dire warnings for the Church and the world, confirmed by a public miracle, were merely “private” matters addressed to three shepherd children to do with as they pleased. Funny, but John Paul II clearly did not view the Message of Fatima as a “private” revelation when he added the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima to the Roman Missal and beatified two of the three Fatima seers. Nor did he speak of “private revelation” when he declared in 1982 that “The appeal of the Lady of the Message of Fatima is so deeply rooted in the Gospel and the whole of Tradition that the Church feels that the Message imposes a commitment on her.”(L’Osservatore Romano, English Edition, May 17, 1982, p. 3.)

Descending further into inanity, Mirus opines: “It may or may not be the case that Mary is unimpressed by these consecrations of the ‘whole world’ when she only specified Russia (at least at Fatima). It may or may not be the case that if Pope Francis could just get the precise formula correct, all manner of catastrophe could be avoided, and astounding blessings would more or less automatically ensue.”

So, while admitting the possibility that the Popes have exposed the Church and the world to potential calamity by not honoring Our Lady’s specific request for Russia’s consecration, Mirus rhetorically shrugs his shoulders and adopts a wait-and-see attitude respecting the fate of humanity. Maybe the Message of Fatima is false! Then again, maybe it’s true and we will all suffer the consequences of the failure to consecrate Russia. Ho hum.

In any case, as Mirus would have it, the Pope and the bishops need never do what Our Lady requested: consecrate Russia, not anything else, to Her. That, says Mirus, would be “literalism.” Well, yes, I suppose one would literally fulfill God’s command to consecrate Russia by consecrating Russia. But then it seems to me that doing literally what God has commanded — rather than something else one thinks more prudent — just might be the wiser course, inasmuch as God is not available for consultation on compromises of His commands.

Mirus huffs that there are actually Catholics who “believe that parts of the famous ‘Third Secret’ are actually being kept from the world (despite the fact that the Vatican has assured all who will listen that this is not the case).” Imagine that! Doubting the Vatican apparatus that Pope Francis has vowed to reform! Now, who could doubt the word of the Vatican Secretary of State?

“Whole books,” Mirus continues, “have been written about this ‘conspiracy.’ But the series of allegations is preposterous, lacking anything that even remotely resembles evidence. It is very definitely a tale from ‘the fringe.’” Elsewhere, I have discussed Mirus’s utter ignorance of the theological matters on which he pontificates. Here his ignorance extends to a subject on which he knows even less than nothing. There is, in fact, a mountain of evidence for the existence of a text pertaining to the Third Secret — a text that would explain, in the Virgin’s own words, the meaning of the enigmatic vision published in 2000, which we are expected to believe has only that meaning attributed to it by Cardinal Sodano, the former Vatican Secretary of State whose legacy of corruption includes a decades-long cover-up of the Father Maciel scandal.

The evidence for the existence of a missing companion text of the Secret is so overwhelming that even the skeptic Antonio Socci “had to surrender,” as he puts it, and accept the conclusion that this text exists and remains “well hidden in the Vatican.” The existence of this text is not a preoccupation of the “fringe,” but rather a matter of common opinion among informed Catholics, including no less than Mother Angelica, who famously declared on live TV that “we didn’t get the whole thing.”

Knowing less than nothing about this subject, Mirus would be unaware that the “fringe” conspiracy theorist Archbishop Pietro Sambi, who was merely the Papal Nuncio to the United States, recognized the strength of the case for a missing text. The “fringe” journalist Robert Moynihan, editor of the “fringe” publication Inside the Vatican, reported as follows on a conversation he had with the Archbishop not long before his death concerning my “fringe” book The Secret Still Hidden, wherein I marshal the abundant proofs for the existence of a missing text:

We were discussing the Third Secret of Fatima, the allegationsthat the Vatican has not published the entire text of the Third Secret as revealed to Sister Lucia, andthe response of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State, in a book where Bertone states that there is nothing more to be revealed.Sambisaid, “Excuse me.” He got up, went out of the room, andcame back with a book.“Here,” he said. “Do you know this book? You should read it.” It wasChristopher Ferrara'sThe Secret Still Hidden.

“Wait,” I said. “You are the Pope's representative in the US, and you are urging me to read a book that questions what the Secretary of State wrote?”Sambi replied, “All I am saying is thatthere are interesting things worth reading in this book.And in the end, we are all after the truth, aren't we?The truth is the important thing...”

Yes, the truth is the important thing. But not for Jeffrey Mirus. Quite simply, Mirus is a demagogue. Like all demagogues, he employs empty rhetoric in place of thoughtful discussion, pushing the buttons of popular prejudice with buzzwords like “fringe” instead of undertaking the hard work of engaging the issues on their merits, as Socci did, which would involve careful reading and study.

Today Mirus and other neo-Catholic demagogues, garbed in their self-bestowed cloaks of respectability, continue to provide cover for the same corrupt Vatican apparatus Pope Francis is supposed to be reforming — those worldly “collaborators” of the Pope who are determined to impede fulfillment of the Message of Fatima until Heaven itself forces the issue. And if they succeed in their determination, the outcome will not be pleasant for Mirus or anyone else on the face of the earth. He and his fellow demagogues ought to ponder their potential share in the accountability for such a disaster. As Socci warns in the introduction to his own book on the Third Secret: “no one will be able to say one day that he did not know.”